Corbin won young Molly's trust, later saw her through illness

Jun. 17, 2012

Tim Corbin, Vanderbilt baseball coach, 'did a remarkable job of keeping balance' between his job and his family during a 'tough situation,' said David Williams, the university's vice chancellor of athletics. / Samuel M. Simpkins / The Tennessean

This story originally was published on June 17, 2012.

Father's Day

A backhand slice, a forehand volley and Tim Corbin suddenly found himself at the net, just steps from his future wife, 18 years ago in Charleston, S.C.

Maggie paused as the point ended. She gazed across the net and asked a doozy of a question.

“I thought it was going to be about tennis,” Corbin said. “She goes, ‘Will you ever consider marrying me?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she started crying.”

Vanderbilt’s baseball coach of the last 10 years — back then a first-year Clemson assistant — shifted into damage control.

That piercing answer, Corbin clarified, meant “not right now” because he didn’t feel ready to be a father to two young stepdaughters. And he was sure that Maggie’s girls, Molly and Hannah Blatt, weren’t ready to accept him with open arms after enduring a recent divorce.

In fact, Molly, then a protective 9-year-old, was doing everything in her power to erase Corbin from the picture completely.

“I still feel bad to this day,” said Molly, now 27. “I was really mean. I just didn’t want to like him. I didn’t want to get to know him.”

After that night, Corbin set out to land the most important recruit of his life — a prospect who would make today, Father’s Day, a truly special occasion.

Molly was the key to his future. And in many ways, he was the key to hers.

“I hate using the word recruiting, but in trying to marry Maggie, I had to do a good job recruiting Molly’s love,” Corbin said. “Molly was older, more knowing, more emotional and hurt by the relationship that her mom and I had, which was completely normal.

“I knew that I had to spend more time with her in order for her to feel comfortable about her mother and I becoming one. So I took on that role.”

(Page 2 of 7)

Trying times

It was early Sunday morning, exactly five weeks ago. The sun hadn’t come up in Baton Rouge, La.

Corbin had been asleep for only a few hours after the Commodores’ 6-3 win over LSU when he awoke at 5:15 to a phone message. Maggie had called 45 minutes earlier.

Molly had taken a turn for the worse.

Last August, Molly and Hannah were tested for the BRCA1 gene, which belongs to a class of tumor suppressors and is linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. An aunt on their father’s side of the family developed multiple cases of cancer at an early age, and their cousin tested positive for the gene.

Hannah’s results came back negative. Molly wasn’t so lucky.

After Christmas, Molly opted for a double mastectomy — an increasingly common preventive surgery for women in her situation.

“My mom and I researched it for like six months, and I was talking to young women close to my age who had the procedure and they just felt so great about it,” Molly said. “Once I found out I had the gene and my risk of getting cancer was so high, Mom, Tim and I kind of figured, ‘What are we waiting on? Why not go ahead and beat cancer before it gets to you?’

“I really wasn’t really that worried about it because really the recovery was only supposed to be about two weeks.”

But Molly’s recovery didn’t go as planned. She developed a staph infection in one reconstructed breast that required emergency surgery for removal. A fever that set in five days after the initial operation in late April hadn’t gone away. And her condition was hindered further by an antibiotic that her body was rejecting.

When Corbin returned his wife’s call on May 13, he asked if he needed to come home. The silence spoke louder than words. He sent a text message to assistant coaches Derek Johnson, Josh Holliday and Larry Day, as well as the players. At 6:30 a.m., he was on his way to the airport.

(Page 3 of 7)

“Coach kind of kept us in the loop on what was happening with Molly, and obviously we knew it was tough on him,” Vanderbilt shortstop Anthony Gomez said. “When he left from LSU, we knew something pretty drastic must have happened.”

By 1 p.m., he was at Molly’s bedside at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, holding her hand. They listened to Joe Fisher’s radio call of a 5-4 triumph in 10 innings, pushing the Commodores closer to a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

“I remember looking over at my wife and she was crying,” Corbin said. “Molly was emotional, and I was just raising my fist. It was a good feeling that the kids could do that.”

The next day, that feeling was magnified when Molly left the hospital for the second time in just over two weeks. She is facing two additional surgeries in the coming months to reconstruct the breast that became infected.

The turnaround

Molly’s complications were just part of what Corbin had weighing on his mind this season. His young squad featured a new pitching rotation from the 2011 College World Series team that lost 11 players to the major league draft.

The Commodores were swept in three weekend series early on and dropped midweek games to Louisiana Tech, Belmont and Evansville en route to a shaky 7-15 start.

“The things he said to the team as they tried to reach .500 … were some of the same things he said to Molly as she faced her medical obstacles: Don’t look back, take small steps forward, stay focused in the moment,” Maggie said. “I know it is cheesy to say life and sports parallel each other, but it was so evident here — a team recovering from a horrible start, and a girl recovering from a medical nightmare.”

Beginning with a 9-7 comeback win over Alabama on April 22, Vanderbilt closed the regular season with 12 wins in its final 15 games — a stretch that included the two wins at league champion LSU — to steamroll into the SEC Tournament as the surprising No. 5 seed.

(Page 4 of 7)

“The kids felt bad about Coach’s situation and they wanted to play well as a result of that,” Johnson said. “The other side of it was we had something to prove.”

Said David Williams, Vanderbilt vice chancellor of athletics: “If Tim had wanted to stay here for the whole (LSU) series, we would have been supportive. As important as all of this is, family is most important. Tim did a remarkable job of keeping balance, but I know it was a tough situation.”

Once Corbin and the team arrived in Hoover, Ala., it won four in a row and toppled nemesis Florida twice to reach the SEC final. That secured Vanderbilt the No. 2 seed in the NCAA’s Raleigh Regional, where its season ended in the regional final against host North Carolina State on June 4.

This season, which featured Corbin’s 400th win at Vanderbilt, showed the perseverance that has made him successful throughout his 28 years in the coaching profession.

Humble beginnings

When Corbin got his first head coaching job in 1987 at Presbyterian College in South Carolina — with no recruiting budget and thus no money for hotel rooms — he slept inside his Ford Escort during recruiting trips. On one such trip in Florida, Clemson Coach Jack Leggett jogged by his car while Corbin slept with his feet hanging out of the window in the corner of a Holiday Inn parking lot.

“It was too hot to have the windows up,” Corbin said. “I remember him looking in the car and saying, ‘Corbs, is that you?’ I think he was kind of amazed that I was recruiting with no budget there, trying to go after kids he probably thought I had no shot at getting. But I think he admired my determination.”

Leggett hired Corbin to his coaching staff in 1993 and also was a link to Corbin and Maggie getting together.

“He was confident and aggressive,” Leggett said. “I knew that he was going to outwork anybody else. He had the knowledge base, and he was blue-collar.”

(Page 5 of 7)

Corbin and Maggie met when her former husband, Greg Blatt, was Presbyterian’s basketball coach and Corbin was the baseball coach. The Blatts double-dated with Corbin and his girlfriend. Corbin and Maggie lost touch when Blatt took a job at Western Carolina, and the Blatts later divorced.

“We reconnected because she … visited the Leggetts,” said Corbin, who was at Clemson by then. “I came over and saw her and saw the girls again, and reacquainted myself with her. From that point on, we kept in contact and started dating.”

Shortly thereafter, Maggie took a job at the College of Charleston, which was four hours away. She and Corbin had to decide if they were committed to a relationship. They were.

A dad to many

Maggie likes to say that her 50-year-old husband is a father to two daughters and 35 sons, whose names and faces differ a bit from one baseball season to the next.

“It’s a very male-dominated world he lives in,” Maggie said. “But when he comes home to three women, it’s different.”

Their West End home near Montgomery Bell Academy is a dreamland for sports fanatics and a favorite destination of Vanderbilt players. It has a swimming pool, a hot tub, a basketball court and a weight room behind the main house.

Corbin’s man cave is a memorabilia nirvana with pictures, autographs, baseball hats, a projection screen with theater seating for game-watching, and two original seats from Fenway Park. A native of New Hampshire, Corbin loves all things Boston. He was a Bruins hockey fan and season-ticket holder for 17 years.

Among his favorite items: a picture of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a shot of Bobby Orr’s diving goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup final and a photo of ex-Arizona Cardinals football player and fallen Army Ranger Pat Tillman.

“I like what it represents,” Corbin said. “It represents country first, individual second.”

As much as Corbin loves coaching, he might not do it over with another chance. He envisions himself as a military man. That’s also how recruits often see him until he reveals a softer side that shines through during team-bonding trips each fall to places like the Ocoee River.

(Page 6 of 7)

“My first impression was to be a little bit nervous,” said Commodores right fielder Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Boston Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski — one of Corbin’s childhood idols. “I felt a little sense of pressure to do better than I can … just because of the way players come up and talk about him.

“I’d never seen him complain until we went to Ocoee before my sophomore year (and played paintball). He got shot out and he’s walking across the field with his hands up, but we made a plan where everyone would turn and start shooting him. So we start pelting him and he’s whining and complaining, screaming and yelling at us. It was funny to see him in that spotlight, where he was getting picked on a little bit.”

Corbin’s leadership qualities could serve him well in another capacity. He has thought about becoming an athletic director when his coaching days end — although he has no plans to stop coaching anytime soon.

Corbin’s father, Jack, allowed his sons, Tim and Gregg, to choose their career paths rather than coerce them into the family business of automotive parts. Jack, at 81, is an active snow skier and Vanderbilt fan who travels from New Hampshire with his wife, Ann, to Hawkins Field.

“I can remember telling him that I really wanted to chase the dream of becoming a baseball coach, and how supportive he was,” Corbin said. “I’m sure someone who had built a business in hopes that someday his kids would take it over, there had to be a reasonable amount of disappointment. But he never shared that with me. He just encouraged me to continue to coach.”

“Tim was so wrapped up in sports, and I knew he was a leader from his Little League days on,” Jack Corbin said. “It’s been a joy to follow all these years.

“This year was real tough. He’ll never tell you how tough things get. Sometimes I have to go and find out from other people. That was true with Molly. He was going through hell with that. He’d leave games as soon as they were over to go straight to the hospital. That’s not like him to leave right after the game.”

(Page 7 of 7)

All aboard

Before Corbin could be “the rock” by Molly’s side this year, he had to win her approval many years ago.

In 1994-95, he chased more than power-hitting shortstops and left-handed pitchers on the recruiting trail. He targeted two future stepdaughters.

That led to spending much more time with the girls, which eventually translated to an interest in Molly’s beauty pageants and cheerleading competitions and Hannah’s softball and tennis.

“I was going to listen to what Molly had to say,” said Hannah, 24, a former Vanderbilt tennis player who works in the promotions department for the Colorado Rockies. “I would tell Tim, ‘I have to take Molly’s side because she’s my sister. But I really, really like you.’ ”

The key was involving Molly in the relationship process and giving her time to adjust.

“He was just so patient with us,” said Molly, who returned to work on Wednesday as administrative assistant for Vanderbilt men’s basketball Coach Kevin Stallings. “Tim just kept pursuing me and trying to be my friend, and I would just be so mean.

“Mom told me that one morning I just woke up and said, ‘I’m tired of being mean.’ And Mom said, ‘You don’t have to anymore. You can start all over and just be nice.’ I guess that’s when I did.”

To seal the deal, Corbin told a 10-year-old Molly about his engagement plans while Maggie remained in the dark. They picked out the ring together and devised a plan to have a waiter at a restaurant put the ring on the dessert tray and cover it.

“When they brought the dessert out, I remember Molly leaning over the table with her elbows under her chin and she was just kind of watching her mom in anticipation of Maggie lifting the cover,” Corbin said.

“When Maggie lifted the cover, I see these huge eyes from Molly — because I looked at Molly more than I looked at Maggie. I wanted to see her emotions because I thought her emotions were just as important as Maggie’s at that time.”